The rhythmic, thunderous steps of the Gem-Croc sent a deep, bone-jarring tremor up through Trenn’s boots. He kept his balance on the creature's immense scalp, one hand gripping the edge of a massive, golden scale. Beside him, Zeen stood braced wide, his own hand clamped onto a plate-like scute.

  The tether connecting him to the creature was a constant, low hum in the back of his mind. It was a simple, primal thing, a vortex of fear, confusion, and profound loneliness. The creature's empathic tether latched onto his own, a desperate current of terror and confusion that sought a fixed point in its shattered world.

  The ground flowed past, a dizzying distance below. The air was a constant, warm updraft from the creature’s hide, carrying the faint scent of river mud and ozone from shattered gemstones. Trenn pushed a gentle, directional impulse down the shimmering tether, a silent command to the reptile: “Follow Mara.”

  The creature obeyed, forging its own destructive road through the rolling grassland. The occasional trunks of thorny, flat-topped trees splintered against its hide with the sound of cracking bone.

  Its gait was a jarring, crippled lurch, a broken rhythm that sent shudders through its frame. Far down its body, the great wounds on its tail still festered. The flesh around was pink and raw, but their cores were dark, swollen ruins.

  Trenn broke the silence. “You’re not going to fill your pockets?”

  A familiar, greedy spark of avarice flickered through the tether from Zeen. The feeling was instantly extinguished, replaced by an unwavering determination, forged by loss and pain.

  Zeen’s hand moved to the stock of his musket, his fingers tracing the carved ivory of the runes. His gaze was fixed on the horizon. “There’s only one thing now,” he said, his voice flat and devoid of its usual warmth. “And I don’t need money to kill the One-Eye.”

  His gaze dropped from the horizon to the giant jeweled head beneath their feet, then shifted to Trenn. The hard resolve in his eyes faltered before returning to the horizon.

  “Are you certain about this… pet god? Bringing it with us is dangerous. We’re delivering the One-Eye’s strongest host right back to it. We’re riding the mountain, it will crush us with.”

  Far ahead, tracking the deep gouges left by the Armored Dog, one of Mara’s ears flicked back, catching their words. She came to a halt and craned her head, her amber eyes finding Trenn high on his perch.

  She raised her voice above the thudding of the giant’s gait.

  “The gnome is right. The croc’s a walking catastrophe. When it panics, it will trample us without a thought.”

  Trenn kept his gaze fixed on the horizon. They saw a liability; he saw a trade. "If the One-Eye wants this body back," he said, casting his Message spell through the team’s tethers, "it will have to abandon the dog. Either way, one god is on our side."

  Beside him, Zeen shrugged. Far below, Mara scoffed and turned her attention back to the tracks.

  The sun was past its zenith, its light a diffuse, flat white through the perpetual grey of the sky. Trenn craned his neck.

  A resonant grumble vibrated up from the scales beneath his boots, a sound felt more than heard. The tether to the Gem-Croc, until that moment a placid current of weary confusion, surged with a predatory instinct, something ancient and fundamental.

  This was not the simple drive of a hunter. A tremor of fear undercut the territorial aggression, a primal alarm directed at a threat, not prey. The jeweled head beneath their feet lifted, its great nostrils flaring as it tasted the air.

  A sharp jolt of surprise from Almitad’s tether yanked Trenn’s gaze upward. High above, her distant, dark skeleton had a single, bone-white arm extended, pointing. He followed the line of it to Bomber, a frantic splash of color spinning in tight, agitated circles far ahead of their position.

  Before Trenn could even form the question, her voice boomed directly over his shoulder.

  “The tracks end at a small cliff…”

  She flew down towards Bomber, her colorful robe whipping in the wind. Both of her skeletal arms shot out, stopping her momentum abruptly.

  “I see the Armored Dog’s armor gleaming in the sun.”

  "Mara, stop! Almitad spotted the dog. Directly ahead of you!"

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  She didn’t turn or look back. She simply dropped into a low crouch, her white fur vanishing against a patch of pale, weathered stone.

  Trenn crouched and pressed his hand flat against a massive, jewel-studded scale on the creature's scalp. "Stop," he murmured, pushing the command through his touch, a simple, firm anchor of feeling down the shimmering tether.

  The beast stayed unfazed. Trenn felt its territorial instinct. It wanted blood.

  For the first time since the ash wraiths, a suffocating dread constricted Trenn’s chest. If he lost control, if this creature turned on them… The image of Mara caught in that rampage was a flash of visceral certainty. The dread erupted from him, a raw, uncontrolled flood that surged down every empathic cord.

  High above, Bomber’s frantic circling ceased. On his head, Skate lost its form, the obsidian sphere dissolving into a quivering mound of purple slime that slid down his temple. Beside him, Zeen flinched, his own horror echoing back up the tether as his wide eyes snapped to Trenn.

  The Gem-Croc stopped dead. The thunderous steps ceased, the abrupt end to the bone-jarring tremors leaving a profound silence in its wake.

  Far ahead, Mara was a frozen statue. From the rear, the clanking gait of Ezy’s Scrapper fell silent. Through the tethers, he felt their shared, stunned focus lock onto him, every mind fixed on the source of the emotional blast.

  Almitad’s skeletal form drifted closer, her empty eye sockets fixed on him. “Trenn,” her voice resonated from the air, devoid of judgment, a simple statement of fact. “You have weaponized empathy.”

  And into the sudden, profound silence, a sound rose, one that the crocodile’s thunderous movements had completely drowned out.

  Yelping. Barking.

  The long, thin whine of a dying god.

  Almitad surged forward, a silent, skeletal projectile against the grey sky. Ahead, Mara vanished below the lip of the cliff.

  Trenn gave Zeen a sharp nod. “Get ready to slide.”

  The gnome’s shock hardened instantly into resolve, his body jerking in a quick affirmation.

  Trenn pushed a simple, urgent intention down the tether to the Gem-Croc: Down. Let us off.

  He dug his heels into the jeweled scales, guiding them down the broad, sloping side of its head. The drop was only a few feet. Trenn absorbed the impact with bent knees, landing in a balanced crouch. Zeen’s shorter legs couldn’t keep pace; he tumbled, his momentum carrying him into an undignified somersault that ended with a grunt.

  Trenn searched for the familiar, hateful tether of the One-Eye and found nothing. He closed his eyes and cast his Sonar, pushing his perception towards Mara.

  The world became a vibrating, greyscale landscape.

  The Armored Dog was impaled. A massive, splintered tree trunk, thrust upward from the earth like a sacrificial stake, had pierced clean through its right shoulder.

  The impaled stake served as a gruesome pivot for the dog’s desperate thrashing against the four massive creatures that circled it.

  His sonar defined the four circling creatures as giant scarabs, each the size of a pickup truck, with three colossal horns curving from their heads.

  The signal that returned was twofold: a smooth, hard echo from their dense, chitinous carapaces, and a deeper, disturbing vibration from beneath—the wet, writhing squirm of a mess of larvae.

  They moved in a patient, predatory circle, feinting in and out to test the failing reach of the impaled dog.

  It's great head shot forward on a strained neck, a desperate lunge that sent its jaws snapping shut on empty air, a foot short of the nearest scarab. The momentum of the failed attack sent a wrenching torque through its impaled body.

  Its free paw scrabbled at the turf, claws digging uselessly for purchase as it fought to stay upright. That single, desperate movement ground the splintered trunk deeper into its shoulder. A fresh wave of golden ichor welled from the wound, coating the wood and dripping onto the grass below.

  Almitad’s skeletal form drifted down from her aerial scouting, her voice materializing beside his ear.

  “Husks,” she stated. The word was flat, delivered with a chilling certainty.

  “The ones from the Wolf Kin territory?” Trenn asked, his focus returning from the dying god.

  “Yes.” Almitad’s empty sockets turned towards the lip of the cliff. “They are here to claim the corpse. They will fill it with their larvae, and soon it will be a Husk colony.”

  “Where is the One-Eye?” Trenn pushed the thought down the team’s tethers, a sharp, mental demand.

  The reply was not an answer, but another question, a thought laced with Mara’s dawning dread that cut through his own frantic search. “Where is Dawn of the Morning Mist?”

  The skittering monsters, the dying god, his friends—they all dissolved. He closed his eyes, his will casting out, seeking the one connection that mattered right now.

  He reached for the familiar, hateful tether, the parasitic cord that had burrowed into his life when he first wore the amulet, a connection that had only grown stronger with each new atrocity it committed.

  He expected its malignant presence, a familiar poison in his mind.

  He found nothing. The tether was a gossamer thread stretched to the breaking point, leading impossibly far away.

  The crunch of metal on turf announced Ezy’s arrival beside him and Zeen. “So, are we fighting the giant bugs, or are we just standing here?” she demanded.

  Skate solidified on Trenn’s head, as if startled by the Gnome in her Scrapper.

  The pieces clicked into place, a horrifying calculus assembling itself in his mind. The dog was a vehicle. A distraction. A sacrifice. His breath hitched, the words catching in his throat. “The One-Eye… it never wanted the dog as a host.” He paused, the final piece locking into place with sickening certainty. “It wanted Dawn.”

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